“What’s become clearly apparent is a culture throughout the federal government — not just the IRS, but the Department of Justice, the State Department, etc.,” Rubio said on Fox News on Tuesday. “We have seen that now through three difference incidents that basically use the government as an instrument of political activity to target your political opponents, to make life difficult for the people that are saying things that you don’t like, to make things difficult for whistle blowers that are saying things about the State Department that you don’t like.”

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He continued: “And I believe all of that comes from the top of any organization. So I think that’s where the questions are increasingly leading and it’s embarrassing for the country. These are things you typically see in the Third World from unestablished republics and other places.”

Obama’s leadership has been widely criticized on three fronts recently. First, for the administration’s handling in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2012, attack at the U.S. post in Benghazi, Libya, where ambassador Christopher Stevens and three others was killed. Second, for the IRS having unfairly targeted conservative organizations that were seeking non-profit status. And third, for the Department of Justice have gone through Associated Press reporters’ phone records.

It was the last incident involving journalists that Rubio said got the media outraged.

“By the way, the curiosity in all this is how the press wanted to ignore Benghazi, they wanted to ignore all this other stuff. But when it touches them, now this thing is the next Watergate,” Rubio said on Fox News. “The message is clear and that is: If we don’t like what you’re saying or what you’re doing, we’re going to use the apparatus of government to intimidate you and make you very uncomfortable. That’s the story of the IRS, that’s the story of the Justice Department with The AP issue and that’s the story of Benghazi.”